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We do many things throughout the day. Most of the time we don’t give these things much thought. Often they are repetitive tasks we do every day. Our “routine” we call it. It may be that bathroom break mid-day, or that coffee break. Or might be those n Google searches throughout the day. You might be able to name some of them and put a count to it, but stop and think for a second. How many things do you actually know how many times you performed them? How much time was spent? How much energy/expense?

Companies collect this information, but strangely individuals don’t. The companies who we deal with often know more about us than we do. Google knows how many times you searched in a given day. It may (depending on your privacy settings) be able to recall each search you ever made. A feat I bet you can’t perform. Your credit card company knows how many times you purchase coffee at a given store in a given year. You quite possibly have no idea.

Stephen Wolfram has been analyzing his life for years. Just tiny aspects of it. The data is stunning. It makes you wonder why we don’t have more products out there that give us access to and control of our own data. Everyone else has more access to it than we have.

Collusion is a Firefox extension that gives another little bit of insight. Who knows where you’ve been online. Try installing it and running it for a week. It’s fascinating to see. But still so much in the browser isn’t exposed to the user. Your search history knows what you searched for. Your browser history knows when you browse the web, where you’re going. There’s a mountain of data there. The authorities use it when a crime is committed for a reason. about:me is a great extension for getting a little bit more of this information out of Firefox. It’s a fascinating area where I hope we’ll see more people spend time on. The great thing about these is they are client side and private. You don’t need to give your data away to someone else if you want to learn about yourself.

However we’re still at the infancy in personal analytics. There’s very few products out there to let us know what we do all day. FitBit can tell you when you sleep, when you’re active and how active you are. But not terribly much else about you. Your computer has a wealth of info, but really doesn’t tell you much. To even get a little out of it you need to be fairly technically adept.

I propose it’s time to encourage people to start learning more about themselves. Data is amazing and can change our behavior for the better. Data is all around us yet somehow it eludes us. Big companies know things about us that even we don’t know. Perhaps it’s time to change that?